Monday, May 30, 2016

Given
the planetary impact of dangerously quick climate temperatures rising around
the world due to human machinations, I suspect there are precious few examples
in the past to guide us forward. We are in trouble in a way we never have been
before. Civilizations have come and gone over the span of human existence but
the entire species and all other species on the planet haven’t before been
placed in jeopardy by humanity’s collective attitudes towards our life support
system. (Of course, we are always under the threat of mass annihilation by
nuclear proliferation but that crisis is not due to the behavior of
everyone—just some bad players and some crazy national policies.) Furthermore,
we will have to address all our major existential problems—nuclear proliferation,
Climate Change, pollution, overpopulation, overconsumption, the loss of
biodiversity and much more—at the same time. This is why Climate Change is the
mother of all problems.

Toffler’s
1970 book Future Shock talked about
modernization moving so quickly that it will be increasingly more difficult to
use the past as a guide for the future. This is certainly true with Climate
Change. Naturally, we have science as a guide as to what is going on. But
science and climatologists’ rushing to fill our knowledge gaps about Climate
Change won’t teach us how seven billion people will adjust to the “inconvenience”
of a warming planet, where the catastrophic consequences are far more likely to
impact those who didn’t cause this crisis than those who did. Also, fairness must
be baked into addressing Climate Change, or else social unrest will compound
this crisis by multitudes of factors.

We
do have examples in history of visionaries who were able to get the measure of
the critical issues of their times and arriving at insights that we, in their
future, find enlightened and forever attitude altering. These special
individuals knew then what we know now. Examples include Samuel Adams and the
idea that a colony of a great power should and could break free when their
unfair treatment becomes intolerable. Jefferson’s notion that “all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights” (though he himself didn’t practiced what he preached.). Stanton’s and Anthony’s
position that women must have the right to vote. Alexander Von Humboldt’s vision
that science should develop and flourish beyond national boundaries and
ideologies. And a lot more individuals throughout our history who saw ahead of their
contemporaries about what people could become by turning the great ship of
humanity towards those ends.

One
such visionary whose views might be instructive in our current Climate Change crisis
is William Lloyd Garrison’s position on slavery in the United States.

Garrison,
publisher of The Liberator, an (the) abolitionist newspaper started in
1831, compelled race equality into the US Constitution. In the 1830's most
abolitionists, politicians, newspapers, and just about everyone North and South
believed that slavery should and would end eventually. But for even moral heroes
like Lincoln that meant holding to the Constitution, where slavery was
legalized, and Colonization by sending freed slaves to another place (Liberia),
and allowing time to take its course. Garrison changed everything as he upheld
immediacy, no Colonization, and total equality. No if’s, and’s, or but’s.

What
we think of as abolitionism today is the result of Garrison’s life work.

"It comes as a surprise to realize
that of all the antebellum political conceptions about slavery that contended
for supremacy--states' rights, three-fifths clause, Missouri Compromise,
toleration but nonextension, popular sovereignty--it was Garrison's program of
immediate emancipation through the repudiation of the proslavery constitutional
compromises and a union dissolved and reconstructed that prevailed." (Page
XV, All On Fire)

Emphatic
on abolishing slavery, Garrison succeeded in convincing just enough groups and
key individuals that anything less that immediate and total equality,
regardless of the Constitution, was the only morally acceptable solution to
slavery. Almost everyone but Fredrick Douglas thought Garrison was an
intolerant ideologue bent on destroying the union.

Sure,
most antebellum folks thought Garrison incapable of compromise and reason—though
now we see that he was quite reasonable. So too will be those who hold to the
proposition that Climate Change must be addressed now before it gets worse.
There are innumerable solutions being entertained right now that attempt to
address Climate Change but so far they are not equal to the task. Just buying
an electric car, or creating a carbon tax, or shifting to organics, or other
single actions won’t save the planet. Nothing but the immediate relief from
manmade greenhouse gas emissions will save our life support system. There are no
concessions to physics possible, no slow and gradual options for keeping fossil
fuel energy use alive, and no transporting this problem to the future. We are
nearing the danger zone on Climate Change, a point where natural and built
environments break down from overheating and social unrest.

Many
now are realizing that Climate Change is an existential problem but are still
holding that the solution must come gradually so as not to disrupt the
'harmony' of our fossil-fuel driven existence or threaten our present economy.

Garrison
was able to see the clear and unambiguous nature of slavery. It was evil. That the
numerous attempts to make chattel slavery a morally justified institution, thereby
avoiding the obvious trajectory, were only making it more likely for all to end
in a great conflagration. True, ending slavery with the Civil War and the
Thirteenth Amendment did not end the brutality against folks with dark skin and
yes, Reconstruction was a disaster; nevertheless, slave auctions and the selling
of people in the US is no more.

Even
more compelling than the moral arguments against slavery are the hard
scientific realities behind Climate Change. Climate Change is the moral problem
of our day. But it is not a moral problem in the way slavery was. Climate
Change is beyond morality in the sense that while it is certainly a moral
issue, it is our behavior, however motivated, that will matter. Though terrible
and evil, slavery was not threatening the existence of every living being on
this planet. Garrison’s goal was to prove to the public that slavery was evil
and that humanity must change their attitudes immediately. Garrison struggled
to change humanity by appealing to everyone’s sense of Christian morality.
Garrison didn’t want to change Christianity to change everyone; he wanted
everyone to actually practice Christianity.

With
Climate Change, humanity must change their behavior so that our actions render
our environment sustainable. If appealing to humanity’s sense of morality will
do the trick, then we should do that. But it alone probably won’t on a scale
and time that will matter. If morality had that power, it would have already
worked. It’s not working; world temperatures and concentrations of greenhouse
gases are going up, not down. Climate Change isn’t just morally wrong, it will
be the end of us if we don’t become another kind of being—a non-selfish being
willing to share the planet with others. Dramatic actions along with a keen
sense of moral outrage will probably have to occur before the kind of change
needed will happen. Actions like Break Free From
Fossil Fuels
are an indication, like abolitionism, that some are willing to stand up against
the social inertial that is plummeting us into an unsustainable future.

The
value of learning about Garrison and other visionaries is that there are past
examples of how someone understood the core problem of their age and became the
vehicle of change. Garrison understood that the only solution to ending slavery
was changing the public’s attitudes about slavery. Not ballot box morality
(continually electing pro-slavery politicians to avert war sure didn’t work),
not making concession with the other side, not continuing business as usual, and
not thinking some states could have slavery and some could not; none of these provided
the solution. Was Garrison right about slavery? Yes, and the Thirteenth Amendment
proved him right.

Garrison
can help teach us to understand the core problem of our age: that our
environment must above all be healthy or no one survives. No human contrivance
can work quickly enough to solve this problem of Climate Change for it is we
who must change.

The
difference between those who would continue slavery in the yesteryears and
those in our day who procrastinate on Climate Change is that the former would
burn in Hell and the latter will burn right here on Earth, along with everyone
else.

Critical
to addressing Climate Change are our local community governments because they
set the rules, enforce the rules, maintain our infrastructures, educate the
public on issues vital to our way of life, and prepare the public for clear and
present dangers. The City has been working on shoring up its own clean energy
and transportation in the first phase of addressing Climate Change and now it’s
moving to the second phase: Our community’s role.

Many local
groups have been a part of the process to complete the second phase where much
is being planned to address the local consequences of Climate Change and engage
the public on this issue. Climate Change is affecting our lives now and it will
increasingly affect our children’s lives.

Please
take a moment and fill out this survey on the Climate Action Plan which will
demonstrate to the City that you want this worldwide crisis addressed here in
Rochester too.

CLIMATE ACTION PLAN "We want to hear from
you! Take our community-wide Climate Action Plan survey.
What is a Climate Action Plan? Climate Action Plans (CAP) are comprehensive
roadmaps that outline the community-wide efforts that will be taken to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. CAPs build upon the information gathered by
greenhouse gas inventories and generally focus on those activities that can
achieve the relatively greatest emission reductions in the most cost-effective
manner. CAPs typically focus on quantifying existing and projected
community-wide greenhouse gas emissions; establishing greenhouse gas emissions
reduction targets; identifying and analyzing future greenhouse gas emissions;
identifying specific measures that will achieve the emissions targets; and
establishing a mechanism to monitor the plan's progress. ”City
of Rochester, NY

The
urgency and importance of helping Rochester by filling out this survey can be expressed
more emphatically by appreciating the backdrop from which the request is made:
It’s getting hotter.

If
the Paris Agreement is going to work, it had
better do so quickly. Earth's thermostat is still going up dramatically. It is
in this way that Climate Change is quite simple to understand; when we overheat
we’re going to cook. What we have done thus far to bring temperatures down has
not worked. Just doing something is not enough. Just getting a little more
environmentally friendly doesn’t cut it anymore. What we do must actually fix
the problem.

Far From Turning a Corner, Global
CO2 Emissions Still Accelerating The
latest greenhouse gas inventory from NOAA shows CO2 and methane 'going
completely in the wrong direction.' The level of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere is not just rising, it's accelerating, and another potent greenhouse
gas, methane showed a big spike last year, according to the latest annual greenhouse
gas index released
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. CO2 emissions totaled
between 35 and 40 billion tons in 2015, according to several agencies. Some of
that is absorbed by forests and oceans, but those natural systems are being
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new CO2. As a result, the inventory shows,
the average global concentration increased to 399 parts per million in 2015, a
record jump of almost 3 ppm from the year before. (May 19, 2016) Inside
Climate News

It’s
important to give the City of Rochester feedback about what their citizens
expect from their government on Climate Change. Of course, filling out this
five-minute survey is only one way to get engaged on Climate Change. There are
many other things you can do also, including using active transportation
(walking and bicycling) for short distances, adopting a carbon fee, protesting against
more fossil fuel infrastructures, driving an eco-efficient vehicle, or fixing
those heating leaks in your house. But in order to act on a scale and speed
that will actually matter we’re going to have to think and act on a global
scale. We must join and help accelerate our local government’s efforts to bring
together all our efforts to address this issue.

Without
your input governments are put in a hard place. Although Climate Change includes
all the issues a government is under an obligation to their constituents for,
many, if not most folks still don’t perceive Climate Change as a threat that their
governments, and their tax dollars, should be putting on top of their priority
list. That means the government doesn’t get your support or tax dollars to plan
and adapt to the assaults on our way of life that Climate Change presents.
Government are the only institutions that can protect it citizens from Climate
Change. Governments are the only institutions that must protect their citizens
from Climate Change.

The
private sector can do a lot of specific measures, like building gas efficient
or electric cars, but the private sector cannot do what a government does.
Here’s a hundred things that your government does: WHAT DOES OUR GOVERNMENT DO? Think about them as Climate Change
bears down on us, not on what climate deniers think about the realities that
contradict their world view.

Be neat if
we could get thousands of Rochesterians to sign this five-minute survey
and learn about our city’s Climate Action Plan. Please thinks of filling out the survey and
then sending it on to your contact lists and so on until everyone gets a chance
to pipe in.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

After twenty some years, the Paris Agreement
finally created a framework in which most of the world leaders agreed that Climate Change
is human-caused, it’s happening, and our global temperatures must be kept to a 1.5C
increase over pre-industrial averages. But the Paris Agreement isn’t official
yet and it doesn’t have much legal teeth. What we have is a bottom-up
(voluntary) mechanism to address Climate Change and if we squander this time by
continuing business as usual we are lost.
A 4C or 6C world would be unendurable.

To jumpstart Paris activists created Break Free to increase the pressure to
address Climate Change and engage the public. Break Free is a series of 23
mass actions demanding to keep fossil fuels in the ground
(#KeepItInTheGround) in 12 countries on 6 continents. Actions have already
started all across the globe.

May 4-15, 2016: A global wave
of mass actions will target the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects, in
order to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerate the just
transition to 100% renewable energy. Across the world, people are showing the
courage to confront polluters where they are most powerful — from the halls of
power to the wells and mines themselves. (Break
Free From Fossil Fuels)

At Albany’s action last Saturday (#Albany2016,
#BreakFree2016), a bus load of Rochesterians cosponsored by Rochester People’s Climate
Coalition (RPCC), Mothers
Out Front, and the Pachamama
Alliance rallied at Liberty Park, marched a mile, and ended up at the
railroad tracks at the Port of Albany where the Bomb
Trains usually accumulated from around the country with dangerous crude
oil. But the trains weren’t there on Saturday, only thousands of protesters.

·Protest
Against Crude Oil Trains Brings Thousands to Capital Region ALBANY. N.Y. --
An international movement right here in the Capital City. Break Free 2016 is
the global fight against fossil fuels and crude oil trains that lumber though
our cities. "The kind of power we have comes with our voices, our spirits
and our bodies," said event organizer Marla Marcum. "There's a lot of
passion that people are bringing to this work and we need out elected leaders
to listen." (May 14, 2016, Time Warner News Capital Region)

·More
than 1,000 march to protest oil trains ALBANY -- More than 1,000 people
marched to the Port of Albany on Saturday to protest against the shipment of
oil that goes through the facility that is owned by Global Partners. The Albany
demonstration was one of 20 taking place on six continents. Marla Marcum helped
organize the Albany rally. "We are here to declare that we need to stop
the "bomb trains" flowing into Albany and we need to keep the fossil
fuel in the ground," Ms. Marcum said. After assembling in Lincoln Park the
protestors marched in unison down Morton Avenue. One group ended up at the Port
of Albany and the others made their way to the Ezra Prentice Homes. (May 14,
2016 6News WRGB Albany)

·Albany
protest: 5 arrested after oil train delayed Hundreds oppose oil trains at
the Port of Albany — A daylong effort to block crude oil trains brought
hundreds of people near the Port of Albany, where they sat on train tracks and
listened to speeches, sang and discussed nationwide and local environmental
issues. The Albany event on Saturday, organized by the coalition Break Free
From Fossil Fuels, was one of several around the country and world this month.
More than 400 of the 1,500 people registered said they would be willing to be
arrested for physically blocking the trains, a Break Free spokeswoman said.
(May 14, 2016 Albany Times Union)

Unlike Rochester’s local mainstream media, where our past
marches for action on Climate Change were unattended by them, Albany’s media
gave full coverage of this historic event so as to engage the public with this
worldwide crisis: The continued use of fossil fuels is driving our global
temperatures into the danger zone.

My experiences at #Albany2016 were a kaleidoscope of images
where folks held signs saying “No Fossil Fuels, Yes Renewable Energy”, “100%
Renewable Energy for New York by 2030”, “Keep It In The Ground!”, “We Can
Change Everything”, “Climate Justice”, “Oil Coal Gas = Climate Chaos”, “Protect
our Climate, Water, and Health” and many, many more while talking to each other,
that is, folks from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Maine, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, and yes, even Michigan (a party of one, a native
American comedian who gave a wonderfully articulate perspective of fossil fuel
damage in his home lands and the need for all folks of all color and ages to
join together in this great wave of change) and more images of folks laying
across the Port of Albany railroad tracks, like that scene in Gone With The
Wind, where thousands upon thousands of injured combatants lie in wait for the
trains to take them away from a great conflagration that could have been
avoided had humanity transformed itself and accepted equality, justice, and
peace, though in this case, in Albany, we listened to great speeches by many
leaders trying to engage the public on Climate Change amongst many who were
lying on the tracks, resting, eating lunch, and talking and talking and talking
and almost everyone taking photos and videos of this peaceful and wonderful
spectacle to share them around the world on the Internet to give testimony of
our efforts and to connect with others around the world trying to break free of
a fossil fuel future that threatens all of our futures.

Break Free in Albany was a wonderful experience but also a
reminder of many other such protests and marches I’ve joined to get our leaders
to act and for the rest of the public to join with us in preventing our shared
fate, an impossibly warm world. At some point, of which Break Free was an
example, the public will say No! to an unsustainable future and Yes! to the
uncomfortable and inconvenient changes our generations needs to make so that
future generations can thrive and flourish.

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